Destruction Warlock

The priority

1. Soul Fire — when it is ready, at 4 shards or fewer
2. Conflagrate — at 2 charges
3. Summon Infernal — when it is ready
4. Immolate — when it is missing or ending
5. Shadowburn — below 20% health
6. Chaos Bolt — at 4+ shards, or with your infernal out
7. Conflagrate — with no backdraft
8. Chaos Bolt — with 2+ shards
9. Incinerate — as a filler

Common mistakes

• Sitting on 2 Conflagrate charges.
• Capping Soul Shards instead of casting Chaos Bolt.
• Letting Immolate fall off.

What’s simplified

• Each turn is one decision (about one global cooldown). Cooldowns and buff durations are converted to turns, so timing is approximate.
• Priority order follows SimulationCraft’s default priority list for this build, simplified to the abilities modeled here. Costs, cooldowns and effects come from Blizzard’s spell data. Rule wording is our own.
• Soul Shards cap at 5 and are whole numbers here (in game they come in tenths). Conflagrate gives 1, Soul Fire 1, Incinerate a 50% chance of 1, and Immolate a 20% chance per turn.
• Costs from spell data: Chaos Bolt 2, Rain of Fire 3, Shadowburn 1. Conflagrate grants Backdraft (2 stacks), which Incinerate and Chaos Bolt use up.
• Cooldowns in turns: Summon Infernal 40 (stays 13), Soul Fire 20, Conflagrate 2 charges every 6, Cataclysm 15. Immolate lasts 12.
• Havoc, Malevolence, Ruination and Infernal Bolt are not modeled.

Sources

• SimulationCraft: Default action priority list (Oct 20, 2026)
• SimulationCraft: Spell data dump, build 12.1.5.70391 (Oct 16, 2026)
• Blizzard Entertainment: Spell tooltips and Game Data API (spells) (Oct 13, 2026)
• Warcraft Secrets: Patch 12.1.5 content update notes (class changes) (Oct 13, 2026)

Diabolist with Immolate, following SimulationCraft’s default Destruction priority. Hellcaller (Wither) is not modeled. Reviewed Oct 20, 2026. A training aid, not a damage simulator.